Last time I was awkwardly breaking off my speedrun-ish ways of Testing Era, and experienced some Full Frontal Garbage (with only a few personal twists). This time I push forward into Agroprom - with certain weariness because addressing things in Agroprom takes a fair amount of time, because having repeated it so many times has made that effort to feel like a chore, and finally because of what I call "the Agroprom Curse" during testing. Namely, that when going through a new build, you'd often just gotten through with Agro when a new build was ready for testing and you'd have to start all over again.

However, this time the Free AI mod made at least the Loner camp fight fairly easy, which I saw as a good start.

Thursday, 20 December 2018

Vaguely around Earth Occidental Standard Year 2014, the drift of interwebs lead my paths into collaboration course with Chaos Nova
universe. I have since run a character in the forum-based
space opera
RPG (dispensing unsolicited advice about universe, life,
and everything in the process), yapped along to countless online gaming sessions, and dug deep into the creative flow with editing, co-writing, and worldbuilding.

Other works permitting, I've been testing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Lost Alpha Developers' Cut (LADC) quite a bit in the last year-or-so. (Well, *technically* I've been testing LADC up to Yantar and Dead City storyline - that's the farthest I've reached before new builds have kicked in and required a new game.)

When starting with current, near-release build, I figured I'd attempt a proper playthrough. In the beginning I'd repeat my beta-moment routines with essentially speedrunning the first task.I found I'd have to un-learn some of my testing habits - this time (I keep telling myself) I stick to my choices, choices matter, NPC lives matter, and so on. Oh, and to add some visual variation, I added "Autumn vegetation" from the optional mods list, and I mostly try to keep the HUD off.

I play therefore I learn. I learn therefore I am. Hey, I like where this is going!

I was born into the eighties in Soviet Estonia and raised by science geeks. As little girl, the little access I had to computers and computer games kindled an inescapable yearning. The decades spent trying to navigate the terrains of fatigue, depression, and anxiety while still attempting to create some content and enjoy my being, have honed my skill of recognizing the talents, the boundaries, and the strategies of managing them. I didn't make a good teacher but I can be a wicked once-in-a-while instructor; my workings in instructional design feed the idea that I'm kinda good at it. In the present day I've set myself a new long-term challenge to resolve: how to tweak my existing skills in such a way that I could take part in creating video games myself?